


Counting by Threes

by Captain_Jade



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Canon Continuation, Cats, Eleven | Jane Hopper Needs A Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Bonding, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, How Do I Tag, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23250694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Jade/pseuds/Captain_Jade
Summary: While Eleven grieves the loss of her father (and her powers) and bonds with Joyce and her sons, Hopper is trapped somewhere in the middle of Russia, with no way of communicating with anyone. He's losing track of the days and his sanity, and he doesn't think it'll be too long before the torture finally breaks him.But there's something inside Eleven that tells her that she needs to FIND him. She knows that all that will lead to, even if she did have her powers, is a corpse and a month of nightmares. But she can't shake the feeling.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper & Jim "Chief" Hopper, Joyce Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper, Joyce Byers & Eleven | Jane Hopper & Jim "Cheif" Hopper
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Counting by Threes

“How do you know he’s really dead?”

“There’s no way he could have survived that, El.”

“But...you didn’t  _ see  _ him. There’s still a chance he’s alive.”

Joyce doesn’t answer right away. She just hugs Eleven and stares out the window. “I’ve been thinking,” she says. “We should get a pet. You’ve never had one, I’m sure. We used to have a dog, but we turned him in to a shelter after...you know, things got...weird.”

Eleven tilts her head. “Pet?”

Joyce smiles briefly and reaches over to twirl Eleven’s hair. “An animal. That lives in your house. You know. I’m sure you’ve seen them on TV.”

“Oh.” Eleven pushes Joyce’s hand away and thinks. “Like a cat?”

“Do you like cats?”

“I don’t know. The only one I’ve ever seen they tried to make me…” her voice falters and she bites her lip.

“Okay. Not a cat, then.”

“I don’t know. I want to see one. Where do we get them?”

“We can go to a shelter. I think there’s one somewhere around here. We should probably finish unpacking before we do anything like that, though.”

They turn to look at the rest of the living room, which was all boxes, most of which they hadn’t even opened yet.

“We should probably get back to that,” Joyce says, standing up off the couch. “What do you think?”

Eleven nods. She looks at the scissors on the table and focuses, closing her eyes.

Nothing happens.

“What if they never come back?” she whispers.

“What?”

“My powers.”

“Let’s not think about that right now. You don’t need them, anyway. The gate is closed. It’s all over.”

Neither of them really believe that, of course.

It’s not over.

It’s  _ never _ over.

* * *

Hopper’s stopped counting the days by now. He tried for a while, but it didn’t take long before the days started to blend into each other.

He’s sure he’s going crazy.

He takes a moment to stop pacing his cell to stare at the marks he’s scratched into the wall. Stupid. It was a stupid idea. Everything about this is stupid. He’s never going to get out of here!

Hopper furiously kicks the wall and slides down to sit in the corner. The person in the cell next to him kicks the wall back.

They must have gotten a new person to put there. He remembers hearing the man previously in that cell being dragged down the hall screaming.

This happens sometimes. People being dragged down the hall screaming. He doesn’t know what happens to them. All he knows is that they never come back.

The most frustrating thing might be not being able to communicate with anyone. (Well, probably not the  _ most _ frustrating thing. But it’s up there.) He’s picked up on a few phrases, but most of the time he has no idea what anybody’s talking about. Which is the worst when he’s ordered to do things and he has no idea what they’re talking about. He’s gotten beat up by the guards more often than he’d like to admit.

He’d give anything right now for a cigarette. Dammit, why are they just keeping him prisoner? He’d almost prefer it if they’d just kill him already. There’s no way he’s ever getting back home.

No way he’s ever going to see Joyce or Eleven or Will or Jonathan or Nancy...hell, he’d be over the moon to see  _ Mike  _ at this point. But he’ll never get to. And he’ll never get to see his daughter grow up. 

A lump rises in his throat as this thought crosses his mind. He won’t be able to help guide her through transitioning to a normal life. He won’t be there to help her through nightmares and flashbacks or teach her new words or watch tv with her. He won’t be there to walk her down the aisle when she gets married.

Shit.

He’s crying now.

This is so stupid.

There has to be a way out.

He is not going to die here.

* * *

_ So I think maybe that’s why I came in here, to try and stop that change. To turn back the clock. To make things go back to how they were. _

She would give  _ anything  _ to have that. Eleven sits on her bed with the tear-stained, crumpled up letter tight in her fist.

Feelings are still weird.

She didn’t know a lot of them in the lab.

There was  _ scared  _ and  _ mad _ and  _ nothing _ and that was about it. As soon as she stepped out into the outside world, a whole orchestra of feelings had flooded her, and it hadn’t stopped since. Except for now. Now it was starting to turn back into that numbness she remembered from so long ago. She rocks back and forth, trying to muffle her sobs.

Evidently, she isn’t doing a very good job, because the door cracks open and somebody walks in.

“S-Sorry,” she mutters, trying to stuff the letter back under her pillow without bothering to look up to see who it is.

“No, no, you don’t have to be sorry.” Jonathan sits down on the edge of her bed and puts his hand on the back of his neck awkwardly. “I just...I thought you might need someone to talk to.”

“I don’t know,” Eleven whispers. “I don’t know...how….”

“Well, you’re basically my sister now, so we might as well try to figure out how, don’t you think?”

His voice is soft. Eleven likes listening to different people’s voices, how they all have their own unique texture and sound.

“You’ve been through a lot, huh?” Jonathan says.

El nods, wiping the snot from her nose on her sleeve. She looks down at the sleeve and its inevitable blood stain, which eventually happens to every long sleeve shirt she owns. Not anymore. Maybe that’s one good thing about not having powers anymore.

Jonathan hands her a kleenex from the box on her nightstand, which had been carefully placed there by Joyce, who knew she’d need them.

It’s quiet. Not as quiet as Eleven’s house in the middle of the woods. Well, technically it was a cabin. More like a glorified shed. But she made it her house. No,  _ Hopper _ made it  _ their _ house.

And now she’s crying all over again, but she’s not alone this time.

Eleven buries her face in Jonathan’s chest. He gently takes her in his arms and squeezes her. “It’s okay,” he whispers.

“It’s not,” Eleven answers poignantly, digging her fingertips into Jonathan’s back, “nothing can be okay.”

“Hey.” Jonathan removes her hands from his back and makes her look at him. “Listen. Hopper loved you, alright? And nothing can ever take that away. Nobody is ever going to take away those memories. They belong to you. And believe me, I  _ know _ how hard making a transition like this is. All you’re going to want for a long time is to go back to...to the way things were before. But we have a chance now to start a new life. To leave  _ every bad thing _ that happened in Hawkins behind us. All the stuff with the Upside Down and the Demogorgans and the Mind-Flayer and the lab. That’s all gone.”

“Gone.”

“Yes.”

Eleven sniffs. “Thanks.”

“Of course.” Jonathan gives her a smile and then leaves the room.

He leaves the door open.

Eleven takes a deep breath and stares at it. Nothing.

She gets up and closes it by herself.

***

The good dreams are worse than the bad ones.

With the bad ones, he wakes up and nothing changes. Everything has still gone to shit. He’s still a fucking prisoner in Russia and he’ll still never get home and see anyone he loves ever again, Demogorgon or no Demogorgon.

With the good dreams, though, he wakes up from being with El and Joyce and sometimes even Sarah...to still being a fucking prisoner in Russia, and he’ll never get home to see anyone he loves ever again.

He doesn’t even know how his brain even produces such hopeful images. Everything is terrible. He hasn’t spoken to another human being in over 34 days.

That’s when he stopped counting. He really couldn’t even get past 34 before he lost count.

It was the torture that really threw him in, though. He pulls up his shirt and examines the collection of cuts and scars and bruises that he’s begun to acquire.

The only English anyone here speaks is the guy who tortures him, and that doesn’t count, because he can’t even answer him, because he’s too busy screaming in pain from the knife slowly ripping his flesh apart or the electrocution or the pliers almost ripping his ring fingernail off or being tossed around by the guards.

Why he’s even still alive is a complete mystery to him.

* * *

“Mike, they’re still not back.”

“What’s still not back?”

“My powers. You said they’d be back.”

“Well, I’m sure they will, but, you know, I’m not really sure how they work either, so…”

“They have to come back.”

“Why...El, we don’t have to talk about this right now. Let’s talk about something else.”

“No.” Eleven paces the room with the phone grasped tightly in her right hand, trying to move something...anything...with her mind. “I need my powers back.”

“Why?”

“To find my dad.”

There’s silence on the other end. Eventually, Mike speaks, a lot slower and quieter this time. “El...El, he’s gone.”

“You don’t know that. I can’t...I don’t think he’s dead. I’m not crazy.”

“Of course not! Nobody said you were crazy! It’s just...it’s just grieving, that’s all. It’s called denial. It’s completely normal.”

“I am not grieving.”

“Yes you are. It’s okay, though. It’s not bad or anything. Here, I’ll tell you-”

“I don’t want to hear. This isn’t helping. Goodbye.”

Eleven hangs up the phone and walks back into her room. She locks the door, puts her headphones on, and turns up the static on her new walkman all the way.

Blindfold.

She sits there for hours.

And hours.

And hours.

No blood. No powers. No Hopper.

Joyce finally picks the lock and makes her come have some dinner.

Weeks and weeks and weeks go by.

Eleven picks out a little brown kitten at the shelter, who she christens “Eggo” and is only a tiny bit afraid of him.

She talks to Will often about their friends and the Upside Down and the Star Trek reruns they’ve begun watching together.

She has “girl’s nights out” with Joyce, who tells her that she’s always wanted a daughter and is so happy that she’s living with them now.

She talks to Mike on the phone about everything except her powers, about how much he misses her and would they like to visit soon and of course they would.

Things wouldn’t be so bad if everything didn’t remind her of Hopper.

But night after night after night, she sits with her staticky walkman and her blindfold, trying to find her dad and probably favorite person in the world, who comes in only a teeny tiny bit after Mike.

Then one day it works.

It’s so quiet.

It always is in that dark place, but this is a silence so loud it pierces her ears.

She walks up very, very slowly to the man, and very, very slowly does she finally recognize him.

He’s bald and disheveled and dirty and alone and in pain, but he’s  _ alive. _

“DAD!” she screams, with every part of herself. Oh, please, let this be real.

Hopper looks up. “El?”

She rips the blindfold off and looks at Will, Jonathan, and Joyce, who are all looking at her like she’s crazy, until they see the blood dripping down from her left nostril and Joyce tackles El into a hug and they’re laughing and crying and “he’s alive? He’s really alive?”

“Yeah. But mom. He’s in trouble.”

* * *

_   
_ _ Dad! _

_ I really am going crazy. I’m hearing things now. _

But no, he’s not. Hopper closes his eyes and rests against the wall and a few minutes later, he hears again, that soft voice.

_ Dad, I see you. We’re gonna find you. It’s gonna be okay. _

And he knows that there’s no way he could have imagined that. It’s far too real.


End file.
